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On this day: September 5

2005: President George W. Bush nominates John Roberts, whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was still pending before the Senate, to be chief justice of the Supreme Court following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

1999: Radio and TV personality Allen Funt (right), who created the hidden camera/practical joke reality television series "Candid Camera," dies at the age of 84 in Pebble Beach, California.

1997: Missionary and humanitarian Mother Teresa, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, dies at the age of 87 in Calcutta, India.

1994: San Francisco 49er Jerry Rice sets an NFL record when he catches the 127th touchdown pass of his career. He would retire in 2004 with a total of 197 touchdown receptions and 208 touchdowns overall, both NFL records that stand today.

1991: Nelson Mandela, seen here in 1992 with South African President F. W. de Klerk, is chosen as president of South African ANC. Mandela would lead the ANC in the multi-party negotiations that would lead to the country's first multi-racial elections in 1994.

1989: Chris Evert retires from professional tennis after a 19-year career that saw her win 18 Grand Slam singles championships, including a record seven championships at the French Open and a record six championships at the U.S. Open.

1984: The space shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after its maiden voyage.

1978: The Camp David Accord peace talks between Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem begin at President Jimmy Carter's country retreat in Camp David, Maryland.

1977: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay. It would later become the first probe to provide detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. The probe, along with its sister craft Voyager 2, remains on its extended mission today, tasked with locating and studying the boundaries of the Solar System.

1975: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Originally sentenced to life in prison for the attempt, she was paroled from a Texas prison hospital on Aug. 14, 2009, after more than three decades behind bars.

1973: Actress Rose McGowan, best known for the TV series "Charmed" and for movies like "Scream," "Jawbreaker" and "Planet Terror," is born in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.

1972: A Palestinian terrorist group called "Black September" attacks and takes 11 Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Games. Two of the athletes were killed in the attack and the other nine would die the following day during a failed rescue attempt by German police officers that also left five of the eight terrorists dead. This memorial plaque stands in front of the Israeli athletes' quarters commemorating the victims.

1960: Boxer Cassius Clay is awarded the gold medal for his first place finish in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympic Games in Rome. Clay would later change his name to Muhammad Ali.

1958: The novel "Doctor Zhivago" by Russian author Boris Pasternak is published for the first time in the United States.

1957: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, the defining novel of the Beat Generation, is published.

1951: Actor Michael Keaton, best known for movies like "Mr. Mom," "Batman" and "Beetlejuice," is born under the birth name Michael John Douglas in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.

1946: Singer-songwriter Freddie Mercury, who would go on to be the lead singer for the band Queen, is born in Stone Town, Zanzibar. He died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on Nov. 24, 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease.

1945: Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Union embassy clerk, defects to Canada, exposing Soviet espionage in North America. The "Gouzenko Affair" is often credited as a triggering event of the Cold War. Gouzenko, who was given a new identity, would wear a hood over his head whenever making a public appearance in order to protect his identity.

1945: Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose," is arrested in Yokohama, Japan. She was released after a year in jail when neither the FBI nor Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff found any evidence she had aided the Japanese Axis forces. Three years later, after returning to the U.S., she was re-arrested on eight counts of treason. She was eventually convicted on one count and served more than six years in prison before being paroled. She was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977.

1942: Japanese high command orders withdrawal at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea, representing the first Japanese defeat in the Pacific campaign of World War II.

1939: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares U.S. neutrality at start of World War II in Europe.

1939: Actor George Lazenby, best known for playing James Bond in the 1969 film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," is born in Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia.

1937: Actor William Devane, best known for his role as Greg Sumner on the primetime soap opera "Knots Landing," is born in Albany, New York. He's also had roles in movies such as "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Marathon Man," "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," "Payback," "Space Cowboys," "Hollow Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises."

1927: The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, "Trolley Troubles," produced by Walt Disney, is released by Universal Pictures.

1921: Political adviser and film executive Jack Valenti, a longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America and the creator of the MPAA film rating system, is born in Houston, Texas. Seen here in 1991, Valenti became president of the MPAA in 1966 and retired in 2004. He also served as media liaison during the Nov. 22, 1963, visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Dallas, Texas, and was in the presidential motorcade when Kennedy was assassinated. After Kennedy died, Valenti flew to Washington on Air Force One with Johnson and became a special assistant in his White House. He died from stroke complications at the age of 85 on April 26, 2007.

1914: Babe Ruth hits his first home run as a professional player in the International League for the Providence Grays, the minor league team of the Boston Red Sox.

1906: The first legal forward pass in American football is thrown by Bradbury Robinson of St. Louis University to teammate Jack Schneider in a 22–0 victory over Carroll College (Wisconsin).

1902: Film studio executive and producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system, is born in Wahoo, Nebraska. Zanuck worked for Warner Bros. in the 1920s before leaving to co-found 20th Century Films in 1933, which two years later became 20th Century Fox. He was nominated for 14 Academy Awards for his work as a producer, with "How Green Was My Valley," "Gentleman's Agreement" and "All About Eve" capturing Best Picture. He died of jaw cancer at age 77 on Dec. 22, 1979.

1882: The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.

1881: The American Red Cross provides relief for disaster for the first time. The disaster was the Great Fire of 1881 in Michigan.

1877: Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a United States soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska.

1874: Hall of Fame baseball player Napoléon "Nap" Lajoie, who won the American League Triple Crown in 1901 and joined Cap Anson and Honus Wagner in 1914 as the only major league players to that point to reach 3,000 career hits, is born Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Lajoie, who won five AL batting titles and holds the single-season batting average record of .426, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937 as part of the hall's second class. Lajoie played for the Philadelphia Phillies, Philadelphia Athletics and Cleveland Naps between 1896 and 1916. In Cleveland he was so popular with the fans that the team's name was changed from the Broncos to the Napoleons in his honor, changing to the Cleveland Indians after he left in 1915.

1862: Meteorologist James Glaisher (pictured) and his pilot, Henry Tracey Coxwell, make a balloon ascent to a height of seven miles, the greatest height then achieved by passengers in a balloon.

1847: Outlaw, gang leader, train robber and bank robber Jesse James is born in Kearney, Missouri.

1846: Jasper "Jack" Daniel, the distiller and founder of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery, is born in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

1774: The first session of the U.S. Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. The delegates drafted a declaration of rights and grievances, organized the Continental Association and elected Peyton Randolph as the first president of the Continental Congress.

1666: The Great Fire of London, which began in the early morning hours on Sept. 2, is extinguished after gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall. The fire destroyed 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral, but only six people are known to have died.

1548: Catherine Parr, the queen of England and the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII, dies at either age 35 or 36 in Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, England, probably of complications of childbirth.

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